Bloody Business
by Brennon Sithech
Summary: The town of Mordheim is overrun with the foul denizens of the deep. It falls to the Witch Hunters to deal with the darkness, and bring Sigmar's righteous flame back to the world.


**Bloody Business**

_Mordheim; _

_(mord: bloodshed) (heim: place) The ruined city of the Empire, where the foul things dwell_

Brandt walked slowly between the prisoners letting his sword pass over each of their heads as he did. He looked down into their watery eyes, women, children, men alike with tears running down muddy faces. It was a pitiful sight; he hadn't thought that it would be like this. He steeled himself and looked around, his soldiers stood beside him with set expressions of grim indifference. They too were dirty and worn out, their swords caked with blood and shields battered and chipped. Around them a warm glow emanated from the crackling straw and blackened stones of burnt out hovels, creating a stark relief on the warrior's gaunt faces. Brandt walked past a pair of women huddled together and took a dirty rag from the thick leather belt around his waist, wiping his brow of sweat.

"For duty and Sigmar" he said, placing the sword on one of the women's shoulders and the chipped edge catching her skin, blood trickling down its rusted surface.

He signalled to one of his men, who walked forwards mechanically and grabbed the woman's hair, pulling her head back. Brandt gripped the sword in two hands and closed his eyes as he pulled it back, and with a single swing chopped down, hacking the head free with a jerk of steel on bone. The soldier threw the head to the floor and grabbed the bleeding corpse, dragging it away onto a pile nearby.

Brandt moved to the next, and with another chop and wretch of his blade cut an old man's head from his aged shoulders. He felt his eyes filling with tears as he moved down the line, the dead bodies then being dragged and placed onto the pyre. He reached the last woman, and the feeling became too much. As he severed her head he dropped the sword and fell to his knees, as the lifeless eyes stared back at him. The soldier helping him patted him on the shoulder.

A familiar clomp of leather boots sounded on the cobbles sounded as Brandt kept his head lodged in his dirt covered hands.

"It is done then? The last of them are slain" a large man in a double breasted travelling coat walked up and pointed with a gloved hand to the pyre, a handful of men who had followed him bore fiery brands and moved forwards, lighting the rags of the cadavers with earnest.

Brandt wiped his eyes and grabbed for his sword, standing and controlling himself. "There was little need for them to be killed Richter." He said looking at the rivers of blood mixing with the muddy water trickling between the cobble stones.

"A mutant is a mutant." Richter muttered looking as the flames grew higher behind them. They all showed highs of the curse, and there is no way to cleanse the taint other than fire" he walked to one of the severed heads on the floor and picked it up by its matted blonde hair, staring into the soulless eyes "A grim task, but one which must be done. You will be rewarded for your valour".

"It does not feel very righteous, and where is the reward?" Brandt said taking the head from Richter and casting it into the blazing inferno behind him.

"Sigmar sees and hears all you do Brandt, and your reward will come in the afterlife." Richter grabbed a hammer shaped pendant from within his coat and muttered prayers to the deified warrior.

"Mordheim is growing more pestilent by the day." Brandt cursed, looking at the burning buildings and the bodies lining the streets, ravens picking at the bloated and festering corpses, desperate for food. One of them, a giant form of carrion shape bore two heads, one skull like and seemingly cackling at the men moving around in the packed streets.

Brandt kicked a rusted helm across the street towards the bird; it scattered to the smog filled skies and took roost in the smouldering ruins of the districts clock tower.

"Damn birds, they are becoming more and more prevalent." He walked over to the corpse the raven had been picking at and grimaced. It was the form of a beastman, half goat half human. Its body was ripped and torn at, flesh peeled off revealing the muscle and bone beneath, all of it distorted and malformed. Brandt took his sword from the scabbard and stabbed it into the beast's neck. "Filth"

"We have to move on Brandt, get your men together and move onto the next street. We have heard word of a vampire stalking the district and need to burn the houses, flush out the creatures within them." Richter said, looking down at the beastman himself and blanching at the sight of it.

"Is the district clear of the innocent?" Brandt said pulling the sword free and wiping it clean on his leather britches, the stains of blood did not come off.

"No, we have tried to move as many from the area but some stay fast. They are led by some misguided fool who says that Morr will save them." Richter shook his head and looked as a gang of his men relit brands and walked down the streets in rank and file. "Morr will just claim them by fire instead, maybe he will see their devotion and give them solace, although more likely their stupidity"

Brandt and Richter followed the mob of hired soldiers down the street to the next district, looking around for signs of danger. A vampire could only mean one thing, and that was the undead roaming the streets. He was surprised that any innocents even stayed with the rotting forms of their once friends shambling around the streets.

"What do we know of the night walker?" Brandt said, watching as the men began to light fires around the base of the few buildings still standing and moving in to try and force the residents from their hovels.

"A Strigoi, the damnable blood suckers. Been leading ghouls from the crypts nearby and swarming through the burnt out ruins, moved a lot of his lackeys down into the sewers, but we cant go down there." Richter crossed himself with the sign of the hammer.

"Ratmen" Brandt answered without hesitation. The fiends were making some of their endeavours pointless. "I hope the fire will chase the vampire from the ruins then, I don't fancy going under the city".

Just as he said that a bellowing and rag covered man stormed from the burnt out ruins and grabbed for one of the soldiers, shaking him and screaming in old Imperial with mad eyes and beard bristling as he stared at the fires. Richter and Brandt stormed over to the alarmed soldier and wrestled the mad man off of him, shoving him to the floor and putting a boot to his throat.

"What's it the meaning of this and talk sense before I break your neck" Richter said, drawing a sword and pointing it at the scruffy mans heart.

"Morr does not want you here!" he shouted, his eyes darting wildly too and fro around the small confines of what was a front garden. "Morr desires that the curse runs its course! You heathens are stopping the work of my Lord!"

Richter shoved the boot onto the strangers windpipe to shut him up "Sigmar says different" he growled "Get back to setting the fires" he pointed at the startled soldier who had stopped his work with the shock. "NOW!" he bellowed, forcing the man back to his senses. "Get rid of this idiot" he said, ushering to Brandt.

Brandt grabbed the man by the scruff the neck and dragged him down the cobbles back up the street, throwing him against a wall of burnt timber.

"Begone with you" he said, looking away and pointing down the street towards the still blazing pyre. "Begone before he realises I haven't slit your throat."

The mad man stared at him, and instead of following his instructions a glare of hate filmed his eyes. "Morrrrrrrr!" the crazed lunatic yelled lunging for him, pulling a rusty dagger from his cloak and aiming for Brandt's neck.

"Brandt dodged aside, tripping the man to the floor with an easy swing of his boot, as he slammed to the cobbles, his rotted teeth dashing out on the stones he ripped the sword from his side and stabbed down at the bleeding lunatic.

The dirty prophet of Morr shuddered a moment before collapsing, blood seeping from the gash in his back. Brandt yanked the sword free and kicked the body in anger. Why hadn't he just done what he said!? He dragged the corpse off the street and shoved it into a burnt hole of a house, rats as big as dogs scurrying away as he hefted the body into the opening. He heard the yelling voice of Richter behind him down the street and the screaming of voices as the fires grew more violent. The arrayed soldiers and mercenaries stood back from it, shielding their faces from the intense heat. Brandt walked back to them, nodding to Richter at the deed done. This place was making him mad, it was making everyone mad.

As the flames leapt higher into the sky, licking at the bottom of ravens circling the roasting bodies of innocent and guilty alike shapes moved from the depths of the giant pyre. Flailing bodies, some dressed in clothes others not, the thin shapes of ghouls and creatures of the undead, all as one poured from the flames, hoping to extinguish them in the muddy streets. A group of mercenaries lost their lunches, another set of them moved forwards to help the struggling inhabitants.

"No!" Richter shouted, ordering them back into line "draw your crossbows, kill all of them" he issued this down the line and several of the men drew their bows and fired.

The thick shafts of metal slammed into them, felling and silencing those screaming in pain.

"You are putting them out of their misery, sending them to the god they feel so strongly for, it is a duty that you must perform" Richter impressed upon them, forcing their hands to reload the crossbows and fire again.

Brandt closed his eyes to the thuds and clicks of the crossbows. The dying screams, and the roaring, crackling fires, he was sick of this place and all he wanted was to leave it behind, but he knew he couldn't. His duty was to Sigmar, and this was all, unfortunately, part of the task. If he had to end the lives of one hundred innocents to find a vampire, a werewolf, a necromancer, he would do so. Still, he kept his eyes closed.

***

The fires died down, just smoke rising from the glowing timbers. The two headed raven sat atop the clock tower still, cawing and cackling madly down to the assembled men who picked through the ruins cautiously. It had been a few hours since the fires had done with work, and now all that remained were charred bodies smoke. They leafed through the blackened debris, turning over rigid corpses and poking the ones still moving.

"Any sign of the Strigoi?" Brandt said, pushing over the corpse of a charred ghoul.

"None yet sir" one of the mercenaries shouted back, "Richter doesn't seem to think he is here at all now" he pointed to the man poring over a map with two disgruntled soldiers by his side, arguing in a heated debate.

Brandt growled and stamped on the head of the ghoul, soot and bits of skull crumbling beneath his heel.

"So these people were burned for no reason?" he said, almost more to himself than anyone around him. He reached down and pulled a small silver locket from beneath a pile of ash.

Brandt flicked it open. Inside was a small tattered picture, an almost indecipherable portrait of a young woman. He clasped it shut and stuffed it into his pocket, whoever she was he wasn't going to let the foul denizens of this place take what was left of her. He had already probably robbed her and her lover of their mortal lives in the constant struggle against the city.

Richter shouted for him and he clambered from the ruins down to the cobbles, stuffing the silver chain and locket deeper into his jerkin.

"What is it?" he said, putting a hand to his sword in case of trouble.

"We are moving on, heading north from here. The Strigoi has been sighted in the old market district and we will not let it escape this time." Richter pointed off past the top of the clock tower and deeper into the city.

Brandt looked back at the smoking ruin behind him, and the dark sky which still hung above them even though dawn had broken a few hours previous. Soon the whole city would be aflame, they would wipe it clean of filth eventually, but it would take many more innocent souls to do so. He hoped Sigmar would gift him a reprieve when his time was spent within the mortal coil.

_Ben Shaw_


End file.
